Integration of Workflow and Agent Technology for Business Process Management

Both workflow and agent technology have recently been applied to business process management. The integration of these two technologies will definitely provide solutions to the problems not to be solved by any of them individually. This paper summarises the capabilities of these two technologies and discusses the forms and their benefits of integrating them for business process management. Generally, agent enhanced workflow management and agent-based workflow management are the main forms for applications of intelligent agents to workflow systems. Some research issues in each form are discussed. A conclusion with discussions of future research directions is also given.